I am the youngest in a close-knit family of New Brunswick Acadians. In 1970 we boarded Canadian National's Transcontinental westward to Vancouver. Four days later we arrived at the other edge of the continent. In retrospect I was fortunate to take this rail journey before airplanes were the common mode of travel. I will always remember how stunned I was by the vast beauty of this country that rolled by our sleeper car window.
I was nine years old then and the ancient cedar rainforest of the west coast subsumed my psyche as it had done to those who had migrated thousands of years before from the frozen plains of Asia to these magical islands bathed in the relatively warm waters of the massive North Pacific gyre.
I was one of those kids who spent all his time in the classroom drawing pictures of guitars. Like an entire legion of post-boomer flashy rock n roll punks, I lived only to make a large rude noise through a guitar amplifier.
Then in my late 20's I retreated to the relatively docile world of software design until the barely audible undercurrent of corporate-tinged quiet desperation inevitably became an undeniable roar. That cacophony cast me out of that sterile world of cubicles and back to where I transitioned from childhood to adolescence, the mystical forests of the west coast of British Columbia.